When San Diego homebrewer Ken Schmidt won the Stone March Madness Homebrew Competition & AHA Rally back in 2009, he was brought in to brew a scaled up batch on the Stone Brewing Co. system, along with Garrett Marrero of Maui Brewing Co. Unbeknownst to the world, the wizards at Stone had something else up their sleeve: the brewers squirreled some of the resulting beer away in bourbon barrels from Heaven Hill Distilleries. Now, some two years later, they are ready to unleash it in all of its glory.

The only problem? There's not very much of it. As a result, Stone is initiating a drawing to impartially decide who can get their hands on a bottle. Starting today and continuing through August 16, fans can purchase $1 tickets—the proceeds of which will be donated to two local charities, the Escondido Creek Conservancy and Interfaith Community Services—which will enter them into a raffle for a chance to buy one of the 500 or so bottles that Stone is expecting the barrels to yield.

The lucky folks that are randomly selected at the end of the drawing will then have until September 18th to purchase and pick up their bottle in person from the Stone Company Store in Escondido. Full details of the drawing and tickets are available at http://www.stonebrewing.com/500mL

*Thanks to Brown Paper Tickets for agreeing to waive their processing fees to allow the chosen charities to receive the maximum benefit!

Stone Brewing Co. was founded in 1996 by Steve Wagner and Greg Koch in North County San Diego, CA. It is the 14th largest craft brewery in the United States and has been named "All-Time Top Brewery on Planet Earth" by BeerAdvocate magazine - TWICE! A recently announced $26.6M expansion plan (that includes a hotel among other lofty ventures) is underway, as are developments to become the first American craft brewery to open a brewhouse in Europe. Visit stonebrewing.com for more information.